Operation Sea Ghost (25 page)

They were able to rent the room in the formerly sold-out boarding house only because they convinced the owner they were expecting funds to be wired to them soon and would pay him twice the going rate once they arrived. Because the proprietor was missing three fingers on his left hand, Batman and Twitch purposely exposed their prostheses while spinning him this tale. He rented them the room for nothing up front.

So they had a roof, albeit leaky, over their heads. And they had a place to sleep, though it was basically two rollouts on a cracked tile floor with folded towels as pillows.

They’d also eaten a little by walking through the Sun Casino, again prostheses in full view, and openly stealing bits of food from the buffets.

But there was no getting away from it.

They were the poorest two people in Monte Carlo.

*   *   *

THEY’D MOVED INTO the room shortly before midnight, five hours after being thrown out of the Grand Maison.

The next morning was the day before the start of the Grand Prix, and as bad and rundown as their hotel room was—its previous occupant had been arrested for counting cards, creating the vacancy—it actually had a fairly good view of Avenue des Beaux-Arts. Had they wanted it, they would have had an excellent seat for the race. But this had zero interest for Batman. He was still trying to figure a way out of their bizarre situation. Watching multimillion-dollar cars go flashing by their flophouse at 180 mph was the last thing he wanted to do.

The noise of these race cars revving their engines for practice laps roused him after only a few hours of restless sleep. In those first few uncertain moments upon waking, reality hit him like a ton of bricks. They’d arrived in Monte Carlo in first class, were given everything imaginable—the best booze, the best drugs, the best girls, ultraplatinum accommodations—and then suddenly, they’d been turned into nonpersons, virtual untouchables. Just when they should have been on top of their game trying to locate the Z-box, they’d been completely marginalized—and probably robbed.

Whoever was screwing with them was an expert at it.

*   *   *

FOR BETA SQUAD, the worm began to turn just after Batman woke up.

He was reheating some coffee they’d stolen from a casino the night before when he heard Twitch scream. He turned to see his colleague hanging halfway out of the room’s only window, yelling something.

But Batman couldn’t really hear him due to the racket of the Grand Prix cars zipping by.

So Twitch began yelling louder: “You gotta see this!”

“No thanks…” Batman replied, tasting the foul coffee. “No interest in race cars … Had enough of that last night.”

But then Twitch walked over, grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him halfway out the window

“I said ‘Look!’” Twitch commanded him. “Down there…”

But all Batman could see were the race cars screaming by, taking their practice laps.

“OK—fast fucking cars,” he yelled back at Twitch. “So what?”

“Screw the cars,” Twitch told him. “Look down on the sidewalk—in that café.”

Batman did as told and saw nothing unusual—for the first few seconds.

But then, he saw what Twitch saw.

Sitting at a table almost right below them was a familiar face.

Batman was stunned.

“Wow—is that who I think it is?” he gasped.

Twitch was sure. “It’s him…” he said.

It was Audette. The CIA agent who’d come aboard
The Immaculate Perception
to brief them in the first place.

But no sooner had Batman seen him than the agent stood up, threw some money on the table, then quickly hailed a cab on a side street and disappeared, almost as if he knew he’d been spotted.

“Freaking spook,” Batman said once he had gone. “I wonder what he’s doing here?”

*   *   *

THEY WERE SURPRISED to find a library in Monte Carlo.

It was part of a small culinary and hospitality college run by a consortium of local casinos. While it wasn’t exactly open to the public, Batman and Twitch, once again making sure their prostheses were on display, played the sympathy card to get past the head librarian and into the media room.

Twitch was Whiskey’s computer whiz, plus he could type faster than Batman. They found an unoccupied PC and he immediately went to work.

Their number one goal was to get a secure communication to Kilos Shipping headquarters in Aden. But though they had the right address and password, after ten minutes and as many attempts, Twitch couldn’t get the e-mail to go through.

This was all too familiar. Everything else on the computer worked: browsers, Web sites opened, even Skype popped on the screen. But, for whatever reason, the computer refused to send any kind of message Twitch created.

“I don’t get it,” he said to Batman. “Do they rig these things so once you’re in paradise, they don’t want you to talk to people who aren’t here?”

“It’s e-mail, man,” Batman replied, frustration boiling over. “They got e-mail in freaking Siberia. Why not here?”

Even when they switched to another computer, one that they’d seen the previous user sending e-mails from, it simply would not work for them. They even tried to send Kilos a fax on line, but like the e-mail it disappeared into the ethers.

It was just like the ATMs and the public phones the night before. It didn’t make sense. It was as if the technology itself was against them.

Then Batman got an idea. “Let’s forget the e-mail bullshit for a minute,” he said to Twitch. “Do you think you can get past the Grand Maison Casino’s computer security system?”

Twitch was already typing. Not twenty seconds later he said: “I’m in. What do we want to know?”

Batman thought a moment, then said: “How about this: Obviously we didn’t pay a dime for that penthouse. And we certainly didn’t reserve it and now there’s a good chance that it was all just an elaborate setup. But it must have cost
someone
something, right? At least for the food and booze?”

“Probably…” Twitch replied.

“So then,” Batman told him. “Let’s see who actually paid for all the Macallan and those Dolce & Gabbanas and Cohiba Behike cigars.”

Five more minutes of frenzied typing followed and Twitch was eventually able to get into the casino’s encrypted financial files. Then he began a search for who paid for all the accoutrements they’d enjoyed while in their luxurious suite.

It took a few more minutes, but finally Twitch was able to pull up a long list of items that had been “routed” to the Grand Maison’s royal penthouse. It was all there: the cigars, the liquor, the cotton robes and the eagle eggs.

Twitch read the total off the screen: “Twenty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty-two dollars, including the meals and booze.”

He looked up at Batman.

“This for a room that was still being renovated? A place that wasn’t even supposed to be open?” he exclaimed.

“Had to be a bribe,” Batman replied. “Someone on the inside got paid off for making it all look legit. The real question, though, is who
paid
the bill?”

More typing, but Twitch eventually found a name.

“It says some guy named Bobby Murphy paid the bill,” he reported. “In cash, no less.”

Batman had to read it for himself.

“‘Bobby Murphy?’” he said. “Who the hell is Bobby Murphy?”

*   *   *

IT WAS A slow morning at the Monte-Carlo Bay Casino.

The newest of the handful of gambling halls in the small principality, most of the patrons were out near the casino’s front entrance watching the Formula One cars take their practice laps in anticipation of the big race kickoff the next day.

One man was sitting at the Chemin de Fer table, though, counting his meager piles of chips.

It was CIA agent Mark Audette. He was killing time.

His breakfast that morning had been several cups of coffee at a nearby café and nothing else. He’d drank a soda with ice around 10:00
A.M.
and another one a half hour later.

Finally, his bladder started calling for relief. It was time to visit the facility.

He left the card table and walked to the nearest men’s room. Two men dressed in maintenance worker clothes followed him in. Suddenly one of the men slammed the door shut and locked it from the inside.

The next thing Audette knew, he was looking down the barrel of a Glock 9.

“What the fuck…” was all he was able to say before he realized it was Batman on the other end of the gun.

“You?”
he gasped. “The pirate guy?”

“And my trusty Boy Wonder, Robin,” Batman said, indicating Twitch, who was standing behind Audette.

“How did you know I would be here?” he asked them.

“A government employee—in a place like Monte Carlo?” Batman replied. “No surprise you’d be staying in the cheapest place in the city.”

Audette began squirming.

“Why the hardware?” he said. “We’re all on the same side here, remember?”

“Are we?” Batman asked, pressing the pistol a little closer to his nose. “Are you even with the Agency?”

Audette seemed insulted. “Of course I am, you ass…”

“Show us your ID,” Twitch told him.

Audette laughed. “We don’t carry IDs,” he said. “You guys should know that. Now, please, lower the artillery.”

But Batman ignored him. He reached inside Audette’s shirt pocket and pulled out the agent’s sat-phone.

“You know the one you gave us was a piece of shit,” Batman told him, indicating the sat-phone. “Crap made in China. Defective battery. You name it.”

Audette rolled his eyes. “I hope they’re not all like that,” he said almost under his breath.

Batman checked the nationality of Audette’s sat-phone. It looked different from the ones he’d dispensed to the team earlier.

“OK—Motorola,” Batman said. “Made in the USA.”

Still holding the gun on Audette, Batman dialed their number in Aden. But the call wouldn’t go through. He passed the phone to Twitch. He tried—with the same result. The call would not connect.

Batman whipped the phone into the nearest trash basket.

“This thing’s a piece of shit, too,” he declared.

But Audette complained. “Hey—I need that!”

“Forget about it,” Batman told him angrily. “Just tell us what the fuck is going on here?”

Audette shook his head. “What do you mean?”

Batman pressed Audette. “We’re supposed to be working for you, right?”

“Yes—you are…”

“Then why have you put us out to pasture? Forcing us off track? Distracting us? And stealing ten million dollars from us?”

Audette seemed authentically confused. “What are you talking about? I didn’t know you guys were here until this very minute.”

Batman quickly told him everything that had happened to them in the past twenty-four hours. Their five-star welcome. The penthouse. The royal treatment. Maurice’s visit. The buy-in fee. The disinformation agent. The chase and the jump jet, and then their transformation into nonpersons.

“When you consider your employer tried to stage a battle against some fake pirates, only to get bested by real pirates,” Batman said, “I think what we just went through is just weird enough to have the CIA’s stink all over it.”

But Audette protested at every turn.

“I guarantee you the Agency had nothing to do with
any
of this,” he told them. “We want this Z-box back in the worst way. Why would we stand in your way of getting it?”

The room became silent. Audette was right. It didn’t make sense that the CIA would impede Whiskey’s progress in getting the Z-box back, not if its contents were as “embarrassing” as the Agency feared.

“What about this ‘buy-in’ money you were supposed to give us then?” Twitch asked him.

“That’s all total bullshit,” Audette replied heatedly. “You were there when I got the phone call. I found out about the Monte Carlo connection at the same time you guys did.”

“So you say,” Twitch challenged him. “That could have been faked, your way of being in on this scam.”

Audette pleaded, “But why would I want to extort money from you guys?”

“Because you knew we’d just gotten paid ten million for rescuing the wicked bitch of the west,” Batman said. “You saw us as suckers.”

“Listen,” Audette said. “Let me tell you something. When it comes to my job, I’m like a big city cop. And there are people out there whose job it is to watch my bank accounts and make sure they’re not growing bigger than they should and that I’m not squirreling away nest eggs or taking money from the Chink-Coms. Plus, I’m not about to steal ten million from the guys who got close enough to whack Sunny Hi.”

“Well,
someone
stole it from us,” Twitch said. “And when we catch him, they’re going to wish they went as fast as Sunny Hi did.”

Audette just shook his head. “Guys—please, we’re not in a movie here. All I can tell you is there’s no reason me or anyone in the Agency would stand in your way of getting the Z-box back or try to rob you.”

Batman finally lowered his pistol. And Twitch did, too.

But they were still certain Audette knew more than he was telling them.

“What are you doing here then?” Batman asked the agent.

Audette was getting perturbed now.

“I’m here because this is where the box is supposed to be,” he snapped back. “Where would you want me to be? In Gotta-fuck India?”

“OK then, who
is
this Maurice guy?” Batman asked.

Audette was adamant. “I got no idea. I’ve never heard that name in any of our operations. Never heard it as a cover name. And I sure don’t know anything about any big secret card game.”

“OK then,” Batman said. “Who is Bobby Murphy?”

That’s when Audette’s face dropped a mile. His shoulders slumped and he almost turned pale. “Oh, God…” he moaned. “Please no…”

“Who is he?” Batman pressed him.

“I can’t tell you,” Audette stumbled in reply. “Just like I couldn’t tell him about you … if he was involved in this … which I don’t think he is. But who knows? And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

It took Batman and Twitch about ten seconds to let Audette’s rambling reply sink in. Then it hit them.